9 October 2024
The City Council voted down a bill Monday night that would have fined the owners of vacant buildings in the Downtown core while outlawing sitting or lying down on sidewalks in the same area, rejecting what has been Downtown-area Councilor Joaquín Baca’s most ambitious legislative push to date.
In the end, the council proved to be in no mood for the sort of grand compromise that Baca was trying to design: While several members said they appreciated elements of the bill and its sponsor for making the effort, they all voted against it in the end.
The battle lines drawn three weeks ago at the bill’s introduction likewise held firm. One sizable group opposed the measure by framing it as an attack on homeless people that wouldn’t actually solve homelessness. A smaller but highly influential group that included both the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the state chapter of NAIOP, an association of commercial real estate developers, opposed it by arguing it would inflict undue burdens and unintended consequences on area property owners. It was left to a handful of Downtown core residents and property owners to argue that the situation in the city center was urgent enough to justify trying something new.
“Imagine you came down for a conference – or maybe the Balloon Fiesta,” Downtown resident Susan Herber told councilors. “You step out of your hotel and look at a dilapidated vacant building, boarded up, and in front of that are people who are actively doing drugs, sleeping on the sidewalk, or just naked, screaming. That’s not going to make people want to come back.”
But the cri de coeur was largely subsumed Monday night within a larger citywide debate about the root causes of crime and homelessness and what to do about it.
Councilor Louie Sanchez, for instance, weighed in with a pitch for more police officers. “Thank you for putting this bill forward,” he said, “but I still think it lacks the backbone.”
“There are really great ideas in here,” added Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn, before pronouncing the section of the bill dealing with homelessness to be “incredibly problematic.”
“If you want folks that are unhoused to have real help, this bill does not do that,” she said.
But if the Downtown revitalization agenda played only a cameo role in this week’s debate, it is sure to be back soon.
“Those are real issues that need to be addressed in some way,” Baca said Tuesday. “The process is ongoing … this was just round one.”
Some councilors did bring up the idea of breaking the bill into different component parts and considering them one at a time, but while Baca doesn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, he is likewise not very enthusiastic about it.
“I may do it, but to be honest I think that’s just talk on their part,” he said.
Baca doubts there is a majority on the council for fines levied against the owners of vacant properties and added that he would be reluctant to vote for a bill that was only about people sleeping or sitting on sidewalks.
Baca doesn’t foresee any more major Downtown legislative pushes on his agenda for the remainder of the year and said much of the first part of 2025 would be devoted to the session in Santa Fe, where potentially millions of dollars in infrastructure funding for his district (Greater Downtown and the North Valley) are at stake. He said he would also work in support of a state bill reforming criminal competency standards – another issue that goes far beyond the city center while still carrying major implications for it.
The problems created by vacancies and homelessness in the core, meanwhile, are also not going anywhere.
“These are two big structural issues in terms of whether Downtown gets better or not,” Baca said.